Abstract
Recruitment of mural cells to the vascular wall is essential for forming the vasculature as well as maintaining proper vascular functions. In recent years, zebrafish genetic tools for mural cell biology have improved substantially. Fluorescently labeled zebrafish mural cell reporter lines enable us to study, with higher spatiotemporal resolution than ever, the processes of mural cell development from their progenitors. Furthermore, recent phenotypic analysis of platelet-derived growth factor beta mutant zebrafish revealed well-conserved organotypic mural cell development and functions in vertebrates with the unique features of zebrafish. However, comprehensive reviews of zebrafish mural cells are lacking. Therefore, herein, we highlight recent advances in zebrafish mural cell tools. We also summarize the fundamental features of zebrafish mural cell development, especially at early stages, and functions.
Highlights
Blood vessels are mainly composed of vascular endothelial cells, that make up the luminal surface, and vascular mural cells, that cover the endothelial cells from the abluminal side
The pdgfrblow mesenchyme located in the vicinity of endothelial cells is specified to the mural cell lineage after approximately 36 hpf (Figure 5A). These mural cells were observed to emerge at the cerebral base or choroidal vascular plexus (CVP), proliferate, and after central arteries (CtAs) had connected to these vessels and blood flow had begun, migrate to CtAs along the vessels
Mural cells in the ventral aorta and aortic arches become positive for acta2 but negative for abcc9 soon after their initial appearance (Figure 2C), suggesting that the mode of differentiation is similar to that of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) observed in the dorsal aorta
Summary
Blood vessels are mainly composed of vascular endothelial cells, that make up the luminal surface, and vascular mural cells, that cover the endothelial cells from the abluminal side. Transgenic zebrafish reporters for visualizing all types of mural cells have not been available to investigators, hampering our understanding of the complex processes underlying mural cell development and subsequent vascular maturation steps. It is noteworthy, that several mural cell reporter lines have been developed in the last decade in our and other labs (Table 1), allowing us to achieve a better understanding of mural cell development and functions [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]. Abcc reporter become selective for pericyte in brain or coronary vessels, but arteriolar VSMCs are labeled in the trunk
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